Do your marketing initiatives result in positive return on the invetsment? This is the question that every marketeer should ask himself. If the answer is not in the affirmative, then it is time to throw away your existing marketing initiatives and improve what you do.

Every marketeer or the marketing team has loads of wobbly ideas and huge list of programs. To list a few, it can be advertising, public relations, trade shows, direct mailers, emailers, events, speaking gigs, sponsorships, community building, blogging, thought leadership etc. Essentially, not all of it would be useful in all the cases and it becomes essential to identify the right marketing mix for your offering and evolve a strategy based on that. You should also be able to measure the effect of each and every activity and relentlessly pursue the strategy till you achieve what is expected in your business. For instance,

• Google adwords will most likely not work for B2B as opposed to B2C
• Email marketing will mos likely not work for high-value sales
• Thought leadership will most likely not get you low-handing fruits
• Article marketing will most likely get you leads that aren’t sales ready
• Sales ready leads would be hard to come by and hence your marketing mix should have essential activities that will allow you to nurture them to become sales ready

Hence, keeping in mind your end-objective and the guideline that each activity can be measured and will result in positive return on investment, you should plan your activities. It is not simple, but that is what will get you results; after all, what is the point in spending time and money on activities that is not going to get you where you want to be. Once you identify the marketing mix, then it is time for you to plan them and go at it relentlessly instead of spreading out one activity at a time over a period of 2-3 quarters. All your marketing activities will have to work together and this is what will make 1 + 1 = 3 and get you more bang for your bucks.

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